Apple Looking to Establish R&D Center in Beijing?

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BrightWire reports on an article from Chinese web portal Tencent claiming that Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed during his visit to China last week the company's plans to establish a research and development center in Beijing. The report includes several other items of information pointing to Apple's continued efforts to strengthen its presence in the rapidly growing Chinese market.

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- At a meeting with Beijing's acting mayor Wang Anshun on January 8, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company plans to set up an R&D center in Beijing, an unnamed insider source told Tencent Tech today.

- Cook also noted that Apple will move a certain amount of its servers for App Store and iTunes to China in order to improve the downloading speed for users in China.

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The report also cites "IT insiders" claiming that Apple is likely to set up its Chinese data center in either Zhangjiakou to the northwest of Beijing or in Inner Mongolia.

Tim Cook shared some of his thoughts on the Chinese market during his visit to the country, noting that Apple has plans to build more than 25 retail stores in the Greater China region and that it is working hard to speed up the regulatory approval process for its products so that they can launch closer to the first wave of debuts.

Apple has been looking to open research and development centers outside of the United States, seeking to draw upon international expertise for some of its technological advances. The company has already moved forward on a center in Israel, and there had previously been claims that Apple was exploring the possibility of a research center in Russia, although those talks do not appear to have yielded any commitments.

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macrumors newbie

Today, HMV (the UK's biggest music retailer) went into administration. This is the fault of iTunes. I think Apple should buy out hmv and turn their stores into itunes stores or something. Sorry, I know this is completely unrelated :s

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I'm just wondering if it will be staffed by all the individuals who pirate and copy/clone new Apple products days after Apple's announcements of their products that has several years of R&D built into it?!
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Apple should be very careful that they don't share their secrets from CA with these centers...

Well the chinese tempt them with a huge market...and end up stealing the technology.

Remember what happened with the bullet trains from Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Siemens.. after the initial agreement to manufacture them, they jettisoned the trademark owners and made their own and claimed it was theirs, whereas it was a blatant copy.

Recently they have been tempting Boeing with their huge market, but there is a catch. Boeing should manufacture their planes in china. Hope Boeing doesn't fall for that.

macrumors 603

Due to human capital Russia would be a great place to open an R&D center. The main problem right now is corruption well in excess of even what we see in Mexico. That makes it very hard to do business in those counties, notwithstanding the selective enforcement by the US government for conforming to local customs on kickback payments.

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Apple built all their computers in Fremont, California for many years, and employed US workers. Now a Foxconn factory in a foreign land employs non-US workers who earn menial wages and work 17 hours a day sometimes to build hardware for a company that has turned into a money-focused and money-driven machine.

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To be expected, its one of the few markets not already saturated with smart phones and tablets. In the US and Europe a good portion of the population already have the phone/tablet they need and aren't going to upgrade for a few years. There will be diminishing returns in these markets as we realise that the new version only does things most of us don't care about, more ram, faster processor, better graphics and lots of other things but for what. I can already do all I want on the phone I have and its not even the latest model. Apples kit is very well made and lasts for years if you take care of it so no need to upgrade every couple of years. There are always going to be the 'got to have the latest' brigade but they are a very small minority. To keep sales up new markets have to be found and so Apple are starting to look seriously outside their current markets.

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Apple built all their computers in Fremont, California for many years, and employed US workers. Now a Foxconn factory in a foreign land employs non-US workers who earn menial wages and work 17 hours a day sometimes to build hardware for a company that has turned into a money-focused and money-driven machine.

Just my take.

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Did you not receive the memo when Apple announced that more Macs (including the latest iMacs) will be built in the U.S? My 2011 iMac is built in the U.S. Also did you understand that this article is about a "R&D" center? No mention of a new factory.

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